@KimSchebler Just finished up my revision pass of #EmpathAndAugur and it's back to the partner to read for the first time since I finished draft 1.

Then, I dunno. Shopping for editors, maybe send a few query letters. We shall see.

@FrostPoem #Microprompt: Lightning

"There was a man lying on the bed in the corner of the room. Lightning lit the small room and Sebastian could see the hair extend from his skull like white wires. His eyes bulged in the dark hollows beneath his brow. If not for the rolling puffs of vapor from his labored breaths, Sebastian would have thought that death had already taken him."

#EmpathAndAugur

Handwriting my novel and not having an outline means I have no idea how much I've written or how close I am to being done.

But I just finished up notebook (traveller notebook with 128 pages each) number 5, and #EmpathAndAugur was about that length. There's a lot more other stuff mixed in to #witchpunk so it'll probably be longer than that but we're getting there.

#AmWriting

Pondering @JessMahler's prompt for #DisabilityPrideMonth about how disability intersects with my book. And, I guess, on closer inspection, maybe it's /about/ disability?

The two main characters have supernatural abilities that your average human doesn't have, but largely these supernatural "abilities"...kinda suck. The book is much more about how those abilities prevent them from doing things than it is about... (1/4)

#Writing #WritingCommunity #EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem

“Ha! No,” said Erika. “You haven't figured it out yet? I'm an Empath. I feel others' feelings, and if they're close enough, think their thoughts. And unfortunately, I spend too much time near Charles to avoid the details of his private life.” Erika pulled a set of gloves out of her pocket, sliding them over her fingers. “It's also the reason you shouldn't try and sneak the keys from my pocket. No matter how good a pickpocket you are, I will notice.”

#EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem
From a vignette:

"She is aware of the messenger before they knock, but neither opens the door nor responds as they approach.
“Master Freeman is wondering where you are.”
A ball of impatience, frustration, paranoia, spite. Buzzing like a fly around the dumb beast of Erika’s awareness. She says nothing, waits for the messenger to move from hesitancy to worry to impatience to indifference before leaving. Erika waits until they are gone from the building.'

#EmpathAndAugur

Renaming the big gov operation in #EmpathAndAugur to the Agency, just for the pun.

#AmWriting

Renaming the big gov operation in #EmpathAndAugur to the Agency, just for the pun.

@FrostPoem

"Good morning, I think,” he said.
“Not even close,” she said. “It's 8 at night. How are you feeling?”
“Better,” said Sebastian. It was difficult to recall the last thing he could remember from being awake. But he felt less desperately tired now, less like he was moments away from falling to pieces.
“A little like Frankenstein,” he added, craning his chest to see a sea of stitches through the prophecies. “How long have I been here?”

#EmpathAndAugur

Is it pride month? Let me repost my pride drawing for #EmpathAndAugur

https://nebulos.space/e&a_pride.html

The book takes place in the late 1990s, and the two are hardly in a safe situation, so binary pronouns, but gender nonconformity is baked as deep into them as it is into me.

Is it pride month? Let me repost my pride drawing for #EmpathAndAugur

https://nebulos.space/e&a_pride.html

The book takes place in the late 1990s, and the two are hardly in a safe situation, so binary pronouns, but gender nonconformity is baked as deep into them as it is into me.

@FrostPoem My book has an overarching poem that has this word so it's all over my MS lol. I feel like I'm contractually obliged to pick it...

'The unwithering crown, in discord waits
Its seed’s return from wounded flame
The burn withheld, its roots unstained.
From renewal will bloom and free by flood
Our discontent remade, unwalled
What spared it: mercy, kindled in all

Entitled “the sky its branches, we its roots”
From the notes of Dr. Edgar Dambel'

#EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem

"But there was something wrong. The figure at the center was warped, distorted as though seen through twisted glass. Looking closer, Sebastian could see a reptilian cruelty in the woman's face. Her hair had turned to a lion's mane, her dress changed from feathers to teeth. Her face was contorted into the long maw of the crocodile."

#EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem

"Sebastian paused beside a canvas of a foot and a half at head height. Thick layers of colors battled each other for resolution. From the fray emerged a portrait of a young man, straw hat pushed far back on his head, eyes wide and haunted. Sebastian imagined that he could see the warring colors reflected in the portrait's fearful eyes. If he had seen the world as the artist had seen him, it must have been beautiful, but maddening."

#EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem

"All this was workable, he thought. If he could find a phone he could call for help, then...
A wave of rustles pulsed through the corn field. Sebastian looked back in the direction he had come. He couldn’t tell if he could smell blood on the wind or if it was only his imagination. Probably it was just his own.
Sebastian began to walk."

#AmWriting #EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem Silhouette is my highly overused word. Here's a cute one.

"Sebastian settled back into the bed, pulling the blankets over his shoulders. The moonlight reflecting off the snow cast a dim blue light through their cabin, making all surfaces ghostly and soft, save where shadows pooled. Sebastian's silhouette was dappled with them. Beneath his brow, in the folds of his blankets, even in the rough skin of his scars. But what was free of them glowed with its own light."

#EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem

“I know,” she said. “It's cruel, but it's nothing that the police or a psychiatrist can prevent. I don't know if there's anything in the world that can stop this from happening to him.”
Desperately she wished she could muster up the sadness that those words conveyed. But all she had was the doctor's skepticism and Sebastian's troubled dreams.

#amWriting #EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem "The doctor looked down, and saw now it was his chest darkening with blood. The realization crumpled him to his knees, then the floor. As he fell, figures in dark fatigues flooded into the room."

Actually not super pleased with the usage of the word here. Now that it's on my mind I may go find a synonym...

#AmWriting #EmpathAndAugur

@FrostPoem
"For each human that the Haven brought to commune with it took only a small part of it with them. Each human only left a small part in return.
But the heart of the endless fields knew all about small things and how, in fertile soil, they would grow."

I also have a lot of the noun forms of commune. because the book takes place in a cult. :D

#EmpathAndAugur #writingCommunity

It's also a trip for me to stumble across this again nearly a decade after writing it. A lot of the stuff are sort of prototype versions of the ideas in #EmpathAndAugur, with understanding as transformation, predestination, and so on.